White and Purple
by MisplacedHyperQuill
Summary: According to the rules of his Mind Palace, Sherlock has been in the room in which he know has Moriarty locked in. There also has to be a reason why the detective is in love with his purple shirt. This is their backstory. Who knew they were connected? R&R :) My take on Sherlock's Mind Palace prison existence.


The three men in suits entered the office.

The one in the middle, the curly haired one without the tie was thrown forward; his captors sighed in relief- he had been quite the struggler.

"Thank you." The fourth man, the man who'd already been in the office- the man who _owned_ the office, said "That will be all."

The oak doors shut quietly, signalling the officer's exits.

"What the hell is wrong with you, _Mycroft_?" the young man hissed, spitting his brother's name like a curse on his tongue. Mycroft Holmes chuckled, a sarcastic, short burst that indicated his surprise and thinly-veiled anger.

"Me? Speak for yourself, Sherlock." the man in grey shook his head. "What were you thinking, just _going_ like that?"

"How else was I supposed to _go_?" he asked, hands raised mockingly. His blue eyes flashed, "Let me go, Mycroft. I'm going to miss it."

"That's the entire point, brother dear."

"You-You can't do this to me." said Sherlock, pointing an accusing finger. He tried, but failed to keep it from trembling.

"Yes I can." Mycroft answered simply.

"You can't. You won't. I won't let you. I have to go, I have to. She was my-" he choked. Mycroft took full advantage, stepping around his desk to face his brother.

"She was your what? Friend?" he let out a laugh "Maybe, brother dear, but you were nothing of the sort to her."

"H-How- How _dare_ you-"

"If it weren't for _you_, there wouldn't be a funeral, now would there?" Mycroft said, the harshness dripping from his voice. Sherlock's lips sealed and he ran a trembling hand through his hair. "What are you even wearing?" the government official spat suddenly. Sherlock jumped, not wanting to meet his brother's disgusted gaze. "Purple. Purple to a funeral?" he said, forcefully bunching up the fabric of his younger brother's shirt, before shoving it, and the curly haired man, away; Sherlock stumbled back, but his head remained bowed.

Mycroft sighed, realising he may have gone too far and moved to speak.

"It was her favourite colour."

Sherlock's murmur was audible, but barely so. Mycroft did everyone a favour by pretending he hadn't heard.

"I know you want to go and be there, say _goodbye_, and all that," Mycroft started. He never understood the point of saying farewell to someone who couldn't say it back to you. Someone who wasn't a 'someone' anymore, but a cold, dead, _lifeless_, corpse. For the longest time, Sherlock had believed the same, "but you can't, and you know why."

"He never would have to see me. I-I'd stand away. Far away."

"Sherlock you and I both know you could never just _stand away_." Mycroft sighed "He blames himself, I'm not sure if you know that."

"Mycroft, stop."

"He introduced the two of you to each other. To him, he introduced his daughter to her death- his own words to me."  
"Don't-"

"He always knew you were trouble, but he saw your brilliance, deep down, somehow, and he thought- you let him down, Sherlock. You failed him."

"_Mycroft._"

"And now he's quit. He refuses to work anywhere near you, and wants nothing to do with Scotland Yard, MI5, hell even a desk job- anything to with the government. Anything that is connected to his daughter's killer-"

"_I didn't mean to_."

Silence fell. Mycroft watched as his brother slowly unravelled before him. His knees wobbled, almost as if carrying himself was too much- an ironic idea, seeing how skinny the cocaine had made him. Fisting his hair, Sherlock bowed his head, shutting his eyes. He collapsed to the floor, a heap of skinny, pale limbs. "I didn't mean too." He murmured, "It was just once more…one last-"

"And look where that got you." Sherlock laughed. A high-pitched, short cackle.

"You're my brother. You should help me."

"I am, brother dear, I am." He murmured, settling on the floor next to his brother. "I'm helping you understand this situation and helping you remember that you aren't the victim here. That girl and her family are."

"Her name is Joan." Sherlock murmured, a flash of ginger, a toothy grin and ever-knowing deep blue eyes flashed before him. He reached out to touch, but the image vanished, replaced by a leg of the old, worn desk.

"Yes, it was." He said, reaching out to take his brother's hand in his, thumb skimming over his skinny wrist.

"Not since she died, Mycroft." Sherlock murmured, knowing already what his brother was looking for.  
"A start, and a good one." He let the hand drop gracelessly back into Sherlock's lap. "Her mother loves you, though. Can't bring herself to blame you. In fact, all she could ever talk about was how the two of you were each other's back bone, and-"

"Of course she is. All she has ever done for us is give us our choice, and cleaned up and pushed is back to our feet when we fucked it up. She was more of a mother to me than Mummy ever will be."

Mycroft was silent, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

"We had it all planned. I was going to wherever, whenever while she was going to Cambridge and return the best forensic scientist there was. It was true- everyone else is just stupid compared to her." Sherlock said suddenly "And there was her hair- so irritating. It was neither red nor brown, always in some tremendously dramatic or inconvenient hairstyle, and her fashion sense," he made her face "Christmas jumpers would have been preferable." Laughing tightly, he clenched and unclenched his jaw. "She loved me, you know? And I couldn't- I just never could…"

They fell back into silence. Uncomfortable, Mycroft shuffled so he was now still seated on the floor, but his back was against the hard wood of his desk and his legs stretched outwards to the door. Sherlock followed suit, though he bent one leg up to the knee and rested his arm against it, natural grace and elegance giving him leeway to sit as absurdly as he wished.

"I actually like you shirt." Mycroft said casually "Nice colour. Wine?"

"Purple." Sherlock answered curtly. "Purple is purple."

"A bit baggy, though."  
"She always said I was too skinny."

"It's a better attire compared to your usual choices."

"She would have thought so, too." He paused "I'll do it."

"What?" Mycroft asked, eventhough he knew what Sherlock meant. The question was posed more of a statement of surprise.

"I'll do it." Sherlock repeated "All of it- for her, I will do it."

"It's better that you make this choice for yourself, Sherlock."

"I said I'd do it- does it matter who for?" Sherlock's eyes flashed with annoyance. Even in withdrawal he was insistently argumentative.

"How long?"

"As long as it takes. A year, two years, a _decade_, I don't care. As long as it takes." He murmured, with finality.

.oOo.

It was only three days later when Sherlock was led to the little, padded, white room. It was like a bedroom, he decided, a bedroom with no walls, no floor, no ceiling- just miles and miles and miles of white bed. Maybe now he could finally get some sleep.

He'd insisted on wearing his purple shirt, but he'd destroyed it, with his own hands, two weeks into his treatment. Sherlock had cried himself to sleep, for days, but only at night, because then he could tell himself no one could see him break that far.

By the first month, everything was too bright, too loud, too painful, and everywhere he looked he could see her face.

They were nine weeks in when he'd started to show signs of definite recovery. Mycroft sniffed at the news, claiming it took Sherlock long enough. When the messenger left, he let the smile take over his brooding face, and his hairline stopped receding so much.

Two weeks later, Sherlock requested for his instrument, and rejected the first violin that came in.

"It's _your_ violin." Mycroft insisted.

"Not anymore." Sherlock said, giving instructions to where they would find a new case, with an archaic wooden instrument inside. The first violin was sold in som auction; Sherlock didn't particularly care where.

Sherlock smiled a genuine smile when he received his gift. He removed the violin like it was a newborn baby, cradling it under his chin and shoulder.

Mycroft tried to ignore the letters carved into underside of the neck of the half a millennia, and almost priceless instrument. He turned away as Sherlock noticed it with his fingers and gave him his privacy as he traced the _J _and _W_ that had been cut delicately in the wood.

She always loved making her mark.

That night, and for weeks to come, the sweet melodies from the gifted man could be heard floating around the chamber.

When he wasn't playing, Sherlock read. He'd requested Agatha Christie.

"You hate mystery."

"I've never read it, and she loved it. Might as well find out why."

Though he'd never admit it, he found the adventures of the female detective incredibly intriguing.

.oOo.

It was three months in when Sherlock finally snapped. The sweet melodies were reduced to horrible scratching, before abruptly scratching; a once quiet, polite recovering man became an angry, unstable, desperate boy. When the self-harming began, in the most unusual and terrifying ways, measures had to be taken so he wouldn't do so anymore. In retaliation, the physical abuse turned verbal- he was reduced to a lonely, wrapped too tight in a straight jacket in a corner of the round, white room.

As sudden as it was born, Sherlock's bout of insanity ended, almost exactly six months later. There was careful monitoring, but they could find nothing negative anymore; they couldn't find anything positive either. He was merely neutral.

The man released was not the Sherlock Holmes who entered- it was clear to everyone. Once he left the facility in a black car to his new home in Baker Street, and all the staff were evacuated and briefed on the confidentiality agreements, Mycroft entered the little white room.

He looked around; deciding it was worth remembering- after all, this was where Sherlock finally decided to listen to his brother's motto- a motto the future detective would come to live by, and would therefore change the rest of his life.

.oOo.

Sherlock entered his new flat, deciding he needed a roommate- someone to split the rent, at least. Leaving his violin on the sofa, he explored his new home. Entering his new bedroom, he picked up the parcel sitting on his bed gingerly, before unwrapping it.

He was unsurprised _and_ surprised by the gift. Most of Mycroft's presents were clothes: ties, kerchiefs, shirts et cetera, but he was surprised by its…sentimentality.

**I hope you like the gift. –MH**

**Rather sentimental, brother. I'm surprised. –SH**

**Sentimental? It's a shirt, Sherlock, along with the rest of your new wardrobe in your closet. –MH**

Opening his closet, Sherlock was greeted by the sleeves of numerous sports and suit jackets on his left, and countless other Oxford and dress shirts on his right.

**Maybe the colour choice was a little memorable. It was merely the colour of your shirt you wore when you were admitted. It was sad to see a fine piece…lost…by you. –MH**

_**It was PURPLE**_**. **Sherlock wanted to say, but backspaced the message hastily. **Thank you, brother dear. –SH**, he settled for in the end.

His phone thrown on the bed, Sherlock picked up the new shirt, thumbs feeling the soft fabric. He let himself smile at the colour, a few precious moments of emotion, before replacing his newly acquired mask.

"Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the loosing side." He murmured, as he hung the shirt in his closet.

He constantly reminded himself of that phrase, everyday, and ignored the fact that he wore that purple shirt as much as possible.

It was a nice colour, purple, and it was a nice shirt.

It was also a reminder of his transition in life to the man he was today; a reminder for him to always be careful, to never be weak.

Sometimes he would glance down, and the colour would transport him, the wine morphing to white, and he was in that little white room once more. He grew used to it, grew to accept and respect it, because as much as it was his enemy, it was his mentor. It had made him strong.

So why does Sherlock Holmes insist on that purple shirt? Yes, the one he outgrew years ago, so that the buttons strained to hold the fabric together.

There is a simple answer to that question, _too_ simple, people would say, for the complex detective; but there it is:

It's the colour.

**So that's my plot bunny satisfied, not my best creation, but there it is.. I got the idea from a post on tumblr about how Sherlock had to have been in that room Moriarty was in in his Mind Palace, so that got me thinking.**

**I wonder if anyone can find other references to other aspects and relationships Sherlock has in the TV show.**

**R&R!**

**-Ash :)**


End file.
